Incidentally
by even lovers drown
Summary: It's not like she meant to lose him. / Or, Robbie and Jade get a once upon a time but not a happily ever after. Drabble.


**I consider this is partly AU because 1) I don't think Robbie/Jade could ever work romantically in canon and 2) I don't know what I have done to Jade's character here.**

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It's not like she meant to lose him. Think of the penny that falls out of the hole in your pocket, the hole you meant to sew up the last time something went missing. Carelessness, well yes, maybe, maybe she could be blamed for that, but it wasn't purposeful, not like she flicked him out of the palm of her hand to fend for himself. Besides, the story doesn't end there with the scuffed-up penny abandoned on the grey streets. He'll be lucky for the next person who is nice enough to pick him up and dust him off, revealing that shine.

She hadn't meant to find him either. Why am I looking at your face, you dreadful thing, she is thinking the first time they meet, quite a horrible thought, but she'd been having a horrible day. She questions his hair, or rather the dead animal flopped over on his head, limply bouncing whenever he moves. She could never be friends with someone who looks like a baobab tree, she tells Cat, because that is what he is, a boring trunk of a body with that atrocious, untamed hair.

But she discovers him like she discovers all her favourite books: at a garage sale with a lame cover. She wasn't hooked on the first page nor the first chapter, and she can't tell you which line or idea caught her attention first, but what matters is that she kept reading. This is the best part, though, she does not have to share him with anyone else, no superficial fans to tempt him away. They could want him the way she does if they bothered to look hard enough, but they don't and all is well.

He doesn't stop wearing his sweater vests and girl jeans, doesn't get contacts; he sweats a lot and still lets Rex steal his words occasionally. To her horror, she likes him despite that. He'll stay up past his bedtime for her and listen when she hasn't even asked to be heard. Beautiful, he keeps calling her beautiful and she revels in this because if she is beautiful, then he must not want to leave.

She is over at his house on a Saturday afternoon and a moment too long sitting idle with her scissors has her wanting to give Rex a little trim. Jade! he yelps, It won't grow back. It won't, she acknowledges, but the dollar store sells glue and yarn if she goes too far, and doesn't he know that he looked so much better after his haircut? Robbie blushes because he is the girl in this relationship. Oh, he says, he did? She grunts, confirming this, displeased that she has to because it's like repeating something nice all over again. He should know how much effort it takes the first time around. It's just them in his room though, so that's why she does it.

When their group first finds out that they are together, it is something of a big reveal. Andre can't stop laughing because, man, it isn't even April Fool's yet. He recovers eventually and actually looks kind of happy for them, so Jade lets the incident go. Cat trills Justin Bieber and throws the glitter that she always keeps in her pocket all over everyone. Beck dusts the glitter from his hair, says the word "cool." Tori has her mother hen face on and she stares at Robbie for a long time before managing a smile. Jade rolls her eyes and wishes there hadn't been any reaction at all. Robbie kisses her cheek, not helping in the slightest.

One day, the power goes out at Jade's and in the middle of lighting candles, they decide to discuss first kisses. Beck? he ventures, knowing it probably wasn't. No, Harold Lee, under the slide, sixth grade, she answers. And she'd punched him? But of course. He tells her that his was Susan Waters, yes, the girl who got pregnant and moved to Nevada last year. Jade laughs and demands context. It'd been a middle school dare by her friends, he shrugs. Oh, she says unimpressed, those losers. She kisses him then and the lights flicker on again.

If he were Peter Pan, she would have been Wendy at the window, waiting to believe in fairies and flying. (Yeah, Jade West knows all the tales, go on, judge her.) But he's not the Prince Charming type, the pretty stranger, kindness and perfection assumed, to whisk you away from all you've ever known your whole entire life. He is the seven dwarfs, the forest animals, the little mice; he is the friend who accepts you from the beginning, no questions, I mean, a few mild concerns, but the important part is that he sees you for yourself and he wants this, he wants you. What she has forgotten to consider is that she might not be the princess - she could be the pumpkin, magical until midnight, discarded in the morning, really not very important in the grand scheme of things.

The relationship had been like getting on a train without a destination in mind. She hadn't minded the journey, she'll let herself think in the future, even though she feels a little lost getting off at a place that's new but familiar in a dismal sort of way.

Removing her life from his is like scratching off a sticker that refuses to come off in one piece. She starts finding his guitar picks scattered around her house. She never got a song. He'll draw inspiration from strangers on a bus or broken glass, but not from her, well whatever, she didn't want one in the first place. (She wanted what one would have meant.)

Did you/do you/will you ever love me, she wonders and sometimes asks when no one else can hear. It's a binary question but there was always an open space at the end of his answers that remains unfilled because he either loved her too much or not enough. She learns which one it was later on because when she was brought up, she learned that if love is anything then love is being truthful, being selfless enough for honesty even if it hurts. She'd taken her mask off for him and he couldn't return the same courtesy. What else had be been hiding? Secrets are never kept alone. The night he leaves, she allows herself to cry with that thought coursing through her veins.

He'd been unhappy and annoyed now and again. All this time? Yes, since the beginning. Every time she had been happy, he wasn't, and initially she claims he deserves it for deceiving her. He should have just opened his big stupid mouth and said something so that she could have fixed it or left before it would hurt this much.

It'd been the small things. It usually is, isn't it? Everyone notices the storm but no one sees the leaking faulty pipes until the water damage is done. Too many Saturday afternoons, he must've gotten tired of them and of her. She should have listened when he told her to stop being mean to the underclassmen and to stop making assumptions. He knows more about her than anyone was ever supposed to know about Jade West. If only she'd understood that he was just collecting reasons to leave her in the end.

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, Tori recites, quoting some poem she doesn't know. Jade doesn't agree, not out loud anyway.


End file.
